#28 - Tour in Real-Time

Let's go on our tour!

Room by room, step by step, nail by nail, board by board . . .

The New Utility Closet/Old Utility Closet/Old Hall Closet/Radiant Floor Heat

This room is almost finished!  All of our utilities (except the soft water brine tank, which was in the hall closet) have been moved from our old closet in the kitchen (the best trick in the house.  That closet has always looked like a pantry, only the joke's on anyone who opens it because it was actually a nasty, dusty old furnace room!). 

This old utility room will become part of the kitchen.  It won't look like a closet anymore, it'll just be a part of the room. And a good portion of the side wall will be removed so when you walk in the front door, you'll be able to see all the way through to the stairwell!  We have to fill in where the floor ducts connect to the old house and clean it up a little bit and then we'll use it temporarily (please, God, may it be temporary and not forever) as storage for the other things that have been misplaced during this project. Eventually, we'll reconfigure our kitchen and this will become part of the room.

 

This is standing in our entry way.  That portion of the wall between the kitchen doorway and the vent will be removed.  And the oven won't be where it is.  So, there will be a straight sight line from front door all the way to the back stairwell window!

This is our current hallway to the bedroom area of our house.  There are 3 doors on the left.  The first is bathroom, second is hall closet (where the brine tank lived), and the third is our current master bedroom door.  That doorway will eventually be removed and the hallway will make a left hand turn into a hallway.




See the bedroom door on the left?  That's at the end of the current hallway in the picture above. See the white cupboard?  The back of that cupboard is against the part of the wall in the new addition that says "Door Way".  That'll eventually be a door to our new master bedroom (pretend that's the wardrobe in Narnia and it might make more sense?)  Those bifold doors open into our current master bathroom.  That bathroom will become a hall bath, so pretend that white wardrobe is the width of what will be a hallway.  A wall will go up on the right side of where that is and separate our current master into 2 parts.  One part hallway, one part bedroom.  The bedroom will be about 80% of the space and the hallway will be about 20%.  Bedroom becomes a kid room, bathroom becomes a hall bath, opening to our NEW master bedroom is at the end of the hallway.  Confused?  Just stay tuned...for another year. ;-)

 

This is our current master bathroom.  The double doors will become a regular door (FINALLY.  double louvered doors on a bathroom is the stupidest thing in the history of everything.)

Here's the other side.  The white wardrobe is on the opposite side of that "DOOR WAY" wall.

As for that brine tank, it used to live in this closet.  The softener itself was in the utility room.  Now the brine tank will be in the new utility room too, which gives us so much more storage! We're going to paint this closet, clean it up a little bit and I'll probably reorganize it.  I'm only showing you this because I want you to feel better about your own closets.  Did I ever mention that we have a storage problem?  Also Mastermind is the best game ever.  Don't you store you cake supplies and sprinkles in your hall closet?  No?  That's not normal?

It's like an eye spy!  High school artwork - check. Easter Baskets - check.  Yoga mat - check.  Softener salt - check!  And our ironing board lives in here too, in front of everything.

The plumber was here today and connected the hot water tank.  Since that's now connected, the radiant floor heating is UP AND RUNNING.  And Matt is a happy camper.  He has an app to check on the temperature and he's been doing a lot of checking.  I think Radiant Heat is his new BFF.  My toes are also happy.  I can feel the heat and it's going to be fabulous!

He also hooked up our new water line from street meter to the house.  There's no more Band-Aid as a part of our water service.  Remember this crazy day from months and months ago?  Somewhere in that post I said something -again, so naïve! - along the lines of "since it'll only be like this for 1 month"  SIX MONTHS AGO!  HA!  What do I know?

The Family Room

 

Same view BEFORE!

 

Adding a beveled edge to a window sill

Right as I'm typing this, I'm sitting on the stair landing listening to Matt saw the trim for the rooms. Now that the radiant floor heat is running, we can install flooring.  You can't do that until the floor is up to temperature.  So, all that's left in this room is the flooring, the trim and the finish work of the staircase.


The Laundry Room
This room will get tile, trim, doorknobs and a utility sink and then we'll be finished!  I mentioned a while back that we had to come up with a "fancy" (by fancy, I think I mean weird) route for the dryer vent.  Matt's original plan was to take it straight up and over and out the back of the house.  However, there's a 25 foot maximum run, and each time you use a 90 degree bend, you have to subtract a certain number of feet.  So, the only other option was to go up and out the front of the house.  And, something Matt learned a long time ago in woodworking is a theory that if something is not that pretty, you can disguise the ugly by enhancing it.  So, wouldn't you know, the "decorative vents" on the gable end facing the street is actually two vents -- one dryer vent, one bathroom fan vent -- stacked on top of each other and trimmed with wood.  It gets the job done and it's only weird when you know about it.  And now that you all know about it ... don't tell.  It's our little secret!  Except, when I'm doing laundry on a cold day, a mysterious smoke comes out of our "decorative" vent and the flaps flutter.  Eh, who cares!  Just smile and walk fast, as my Nana always says.  At least we have clean underwear, who cares that drying them makes our decorative vents flutter.

 

 

The Master Bedroom
Our new bedroom will have the same wood floor that we use in the family room.  It just needs flooring, trim, closet components, and closet doors on the small closet and it'll be complete.  The door into the old house won't be opened up until all of the new portion is finished.  Like I mentioned above, this will be a bedroom door to our bedroom, and will open into what will become a hallway.  Currently, that is our master bedroom. But we'll put up a wall that will divide our current master bedroom into 3/4 and 1/4 portions. 

closet, doorway into the old house, laundry room door.  The door to the laundry room will be in our master bedroom.  You might find this to be a tad strange.  But it's less strange than having a bedroom door open right into the family room.  So our room goes into the laundry room which goes into the family room.  We needed/wanted to have a connection to that part of the house, otherwise it seems really, really far away.

Standing by the brown doorway looking at the walk-in closet (left) and bathroom (right)

Master closet!

The Master Bathroom
As I wrote about yesterday, it needs the vanity and mirror.  And also the toilet, the floor, the shower, the window trim, the closet, the everything . . .   Lots to be done here! 

toilet area on the left, vanity area on the right

standing in the vanity area, looking into the shower (Purple).  small, and I mean small (but ADORABLE) linen closet on the right.

Do you remember the skunk saga?  Well, I was looking through old pictures and I saw this.  A little foreshadowing going on there.  That picture of the skunk also shows our bathroom mirror! 



The Stairwell There's so much to be done!  This is such a small part of the square footage, but it's kinda high maintenance! It needs the stair treads, risers, trim, balusters, banisters.  We're most likely going to use a mix of wood and iron on the banister/balusters and I'm excited to see how that comes out!   As I mentioned before - the lumber we're going to use for the stair treads is still a freshly felled tree, so that's going to be quite a process. I might convince Matt to write all about that!  Meanwhile, speaking of felled trees, this is a very cozy, relaxing, enjoyable YouTube Video and the house at the end is to die for! 

 

BEFORE!

The UpstairsSince the new water service was connected yesterday, we have water!  The bathtub works!

  It's really throwing me for a loop.  All of the mystery is lost since I've seen every layer of this process, and even though it was done right and done well, ignorance in this case is bliss for me.  It seems absolutely impossible to me that water should be flowing up to this part of my house.  In my mind, it's plywood and 2 x 4s and it's bizarre and hasn't soaked in (ha!) that there's actually running water and that eventually we'll be able to flush a toilet.   Well, as soon as the toilet is NOT in the closet, that is.  I have to remind the kids & friends to please not play on the toilet  We don't need it to tip over and make a hole in the wall.  The things you say as a parent are incredibly strange sometimes.

 

We need to purchase and install faucets, install the toilet.  In the bedroom we just need to install the closet door (we have something special in mind and I cannot wait to see if it works out!) and finish out the build-in bookshelf.  Both are Phase 2 and won't be necessary for the bank to sign off and cut our final check.

 

The Outside
Since it's winter, I keep forgetting that we also has an outside, since I never ever ever go out there!  But, we still need to hang the siding and window trim to be Bank-Done.  We'll have to grade our yard too, because, well.  It's a swamp. But I don't think we need to do any of that until after we have the final bank inspection.

Slow and Steady wins the race!